The End of Love: Kaniuk’s Adam Resurrected and Grossman’s See Under: Love Revisited

This essay proposes a comparative reading of Yoram Kaniuk’s novel Adam Resurrected (1969) and David Grossmans’ novel See Under: Love (1986). It follows changes in Israeli society as a remembering community from the 1960s, when Kaniuk’s novel was published, to the 1980s. The essay identifies a shift from a more optimistic stand reflected in the early novel regarding the prospects of recovering from the Holocaust trauma to a more pessimistic one. This is attributed to a decrease in the belief in collective solidarity and, consequently, in the ability of humanly interaction to save survivors from their loss of self-dignity as human beings. Moreover, a more profound understanding of the potential of evil in any human interaction determines See Under: Love to serious doubt in the prospects of the recovery of humanity, particularly through art, to which it is so highly committed.